


Nothing

by hentailobster



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, What-If, idk i just like to make myself sad sometimes, uhh basically ego wins and it's sad bitch hours
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 23:20:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18215021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hentailobster/pseuds/hentailobster
Summary: The less Peter remembers them, the less he remembers why he hates Ego so much.But he doesn’t forget that he does.





	Nothing

The light pierces Peter’s chest, and a cold like nothing he’s ever felt before spreads through his body. It’s past the type of cold that burns. Past even what little he remembers of the endless, unforgiving cold of open space. It’s an emptiness, and it’s consuming him. 

 

And then he feels it. 

 

The planet’s core. Ego’s core. It’s a direct link to everything else on the planet, and soon he feels that too. He can’t hear his friends, as they cry out in anguish, but he feels them. Feels Yondu’s neck snap under Ego’s grasp. The creaking of the metal embedded in Rocket’s bones, bending in ways nothing was ever meant to be bent. And the soft snaps of the oh so fragile twigs that make up Groot’s body, as they give way one after another. Above him, on top of him, on his and Ego’s surface, Drax sinks. To the very end he tries so hard to keep Mantis safe, but she too is buried under tonnes and tonnes of earth. Kraglin stays. He could have torn free of Ego’s tentacles, but loyalty to his captain keeps him on the planet until the fight becomes too much for the ship. Peter feels the vibrations as it explodes, sending rocks cascading down the opening that was to be their escape. 

 

And Gamora falls. Peter feels her and her sisters’ grips get violently torn away. 

 

He feels the impact. 

 

And then he feels nothing. 

 

 

 

For hundreds of years he hates Ego. 

 

He spends most of them hooked up to the core and its direct link to the empty universe. He sometimes wonders what he’d be able to feel, if there was something out there to feel. As it is now, there’s just an emptiness. It’s bigger than Peter, bigger than Ego, bigger than the universe once was. There’s not even an echo of the billions of lives that they eradicated. Ego and him. 

 

Peter knows it’s his fault. He knows that if he’d only listened to her, this would never have happened. For the first hundred years he remembers how she looked when she said it. The next century, just her voice. By the time he’s been living for millennia he doesn’t even remember her name. Nor theirs. Just that they were, and now they are not. They’re shadows, shards of memories he once had, and an endless longing. 

 

The less he remembers them, the less he remembers why he hates Ego so much. 

 

But he doesn’t forget that he does. 

 

 

 

He doesn’t forget, not even when Ego starts talking to him. Says they’re blood, and that he’s going to teach Peter everything he knows once Peter just calms down. 

 

Peter doesn’t calm down. But he learns not to tell Ego that. 

 

Ego finally lets him go. 

 

 

 

The sudden lack of cold shocks him. Burns him. He can’t breathe, doesn’t remember how to. 

 

Ego laughs at him and pats his shoulder. The touch is strange. Alien. Peter has vague memories of both friendly punches and soft, gentle caresses. Ego’s touch is nothing like what he remembers and he hates it. He wants Ego to stop. 

 

He doesn’t tell Ego that. 

 

He still hates Ego. 

 

He doesn’t tell Ego that either. 

 

 

 

The two of them talk, because there’s not much left to do in a universe with only the two of them. They don’t communicate with their tongues and vocal chords and whatnot, of course. Their communication is through the link they both have to the core. Ego sends whatever he wants Peter to know. Peter does the same. They both keep things. 

 

He asks Ego to teach him. Ego says no. 

 

He asks again, two hundred years later, and this time Ego agrees. 

 

They start small, as Ego puts it, by having Peter explore his own mind. It’s empty, and it scares him. It’s been growing for thousands of years, with nothing to fill it. Except the pieces, the ones he can still faintly remember. As if looking at them through the corner of his eye. 

 

Peter finds more of them when he really looks. He even finds where they’re coming from, but he doesn’t go there. 

 

He admits to himself that he’s scared, even though he’s certain he would never have done such a thing as he was before. Back with them, and with her. But he is scared. Scared that his memories might not be big enough to fill up the emptiness. He leaves them be, as Ego teaches him more. About their universe, and about their core. What it is, how it works. Its construction. How it connects them. 

 

Peter spends nearly all of his time with it. And he finally makes up his mind. 

 

 

 

Ego’s scream is a shockwave going through their link. Peter ignores it, and focuses on the core instead. It’s dissolving into a pure, blinding light, and Peter can’t look away. For the first time in thousands of years he smiles. 

 

He doesn’t even look at Ego as he crumbles into nothing. Instead he closes his eyes. Focuses the last of the core’s powers. 

 

He finds something inside himself 

 

_”I found something inside myself”_

 

It’s a clear memory. Of her. Of him. Of them together, after just barely escaping death. Peter grabs onto it and goes deeper. 

 

He finds more. So much more. 

 

Melodies that no one has played since the end of the universe. 

 

His vocal chords are withered after millennia of not being used, and millennia before that of nothing but screaming. His singing isn’t pretty, but it’s a sweet lullaby nonetheless. 

 

Peter remembers a family. He remembers a kind soul that gave him that family, even if he never was there to see it in its full glory. He remembers the child that came after that soul and brought them all together. He remembers a man who laughed through the pain of loss. He remembers a snarky and rude creature that he’d trusted with his life. He remembers a girl who could have been one of them had she just had a little more time. He remembers his daddy. He remembers his mother. He remembers her. A rare smile that would light up the universe better than a thousand suns. He remembers everything. 

 

He feels everything. 

 

And then he feels nothing. 

**Author's Note:**

> I just rewatched gotg vol 2 and was hit with a major vision so- as previously stated- it is now sad bitch hours cheers   
> (feedback is always appreciated)


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